Becoming aware of the ecological decline
In 1974, when her then-husband campaigned the second time for a seat in Parliament, he promised to find jobs to limit the rising unemployment in Kenya.
In 1975, she spoke to women from rural areas of Kenya in preparation of a UN meeting that was being convened in Mexico City. She interacted with these women and asked them what they were concerned about. Many of them told Maathai that they needed firewood, clean drinking water, adequate nutritious food and they needed income.
When she visited Nyeri, her hometown, in the mid-1970s, she found that streams, that she used to see as a child, were all dried out. There were increased in desertification, vast deforestation to make way for farms or plantation of fast-growing exotic trees that were degrading the soil and damaging the ecosystem.
She made the connection between the ecological decline to the felt needs to the women in the community. Hence connecting her ideas for environmental restoration and providing jobs, she founded Envirocare Ltd.
Imgsrc: https://www.afar.com/places/karura-forest-nairobi
Envirocare Ltd. was a business established to set up a tree nursery in the non-forested areas in the Kakura Forest and teach locals to plant trees to conserve the environment. They recruited residents in the Lang’ata Constituency which her husband won the campaign in.
Cessation of Envirocare Ltd
In June 1976, Wangari Maathai was given a opportunity to attend a conference on Human Settlements in Vancouver (HABITAT I). With the inspiration from the conference to make Envirocare Ltd better, she returned to Kenya.
A tree nursery was set in her house. However, there was a lack of support of Envirocare Ltd. in her family and an order from the government to forbid people from using water for secondary purposes during a shortage of water in Nairobi. With no support from the household and the water shortage, most of the seedlings died, resulting in the collapse of the nursery. Hence the initiative had to be ceased.
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